Soccer/Unity Cup: "Support England here" read the signs outside just about every pub, invariably bedecked with St George's flags, between the Irish team hotel in Bexleyheath and their training ground. If they wanted to forget the impending European Championships and their absence from the tournament it was proving difficult.
They don't, though, label Clinton Morrison as an "infectiously enthusiastic" character for nothing. Yesterday morning, at the hotel, he gave the impression that there's nowhere he'd rather be in early June - not even in a pre-Euro 2004 Mediterranean training camp - than grey and drizzly Bexleyheath, preparing for a wooden-spoon encounter with Jamaica in the Unity Cup.
Indeed, the organisers could do worse than to send Morrison on an open-top bus tour of south London, loudspeaker in hand, to drum up some enthusiasm for tonight's game - there's a dread feeling that the attendance will be even lower than Saturday's 7,400, the best hope being a repeat of the Jamaican community's support for their team when they made up the bulk of Monday's 14,500 crowd against Nigeria. That was, though, a bank holiday.
It's probably safe to assume that Birmingham City manager Steve Bruce won't make his way to The Valley, so irritated was he with Ireland's end-of-season schedule. Like his club-mate Kenny Cunningham, however, Morrison insisted on turning up for international duty.
"He (Bruce) wasn't too keen on these games, but I was keen on them and it's my decision - I want to play for my country and I want as many caps as possible and to score as many goals as possible," he said.
Having recently voiced concerns about his position at Birmingham, following the signing of Emile Heskey, Morrison is now confident he has a future at the Premiership club, having been reassured by Bruce.
"He told me that so long as he's at Birmingham I'll always be there 'cos I was his first major signing and he's got faith in my ability and he knows I can go all the way to the top. He told me I'd taken time but that I needed time to adjust - he said I'm settled now so next year is a big year for me.
"Heskey . . . ah, it's just competition for places and I'm not going to lie down and say 'you're going to walk straight in to the team'. As long as I keep doing my stuff I'll battle with him and we'll have to see what happens. Don't mean 'cos he plays for England, 'cos he's an international, that he should be picked ahead of me, 'cos I play for Ireland, I'm an international, you know what I mean?"
The response brought a chuckle from Morrison's international manager, sitting beside him, an improvement, by all accounts, on his mood after the Nigeria defeat.
Did you discuss the Nigeria game? What was the players' general feeling, Brian? "I didn't get their general feeling, I just told them my general feeling."
"He weren't happy," grinned Morrison. "He weren't happy at all."
"Jamaica are a big strong team, inventive, particularly out wide, they'll give us a good game," said Kerr, "but I'm more interested in how we're going to go because we didn't do ourselves justice on Saturday.
"There've been positives and a lot of disappointments, but we'll get over that. Martin Rowlands, for example, has played in a couple of games and has done reasonably well and if we hadn't had this group of games people like him wouldn't have got the opportunity. We're a bit away from what we would have wanted to have but it'll be a young, vibrant team against Jamaica.
"I would have liked the balance to this squad to have been different, but we have what we have and we have to work with it. Almost all of them have come through the underage system. It's coming earlier for some of them than we would have wanted, it would have been better if they came in to a more experienced group. When we played the Czech Republic, if you'd taken Mark Kinsella and Gary Doherty out of it the rest of the substitutes hadn't got 20 caps between them, and there were 10 substitutes. That's what we're working with now, it's not easy getting results with that but these fellas are hungry and we'll be better against Jamaica."
Blackburn Rovers' Jonathan Douglas is a doubt for the game after twisting his knee in training but John O'Shea, barring any difficulties in this morning's session, will start tonight having overcome an ankle injury.
In the absence of Kenny Cunningham who, like Steve Finnan, Matt Holland and Robbie Keane will be rested, Mark Kinsella will captain the team. Goalkeeper Paddy Kenny will win his second cap, with Andy O'Brien returning to partner Gary Doherty at the centre of defence. Morrison is likely to link up with Alan Lee in attack, with Michael Doyle and Aiden McGeady expected to win their first caps, probably from the bench.
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (probable): Kenny (Sheffield Utd); Maybury (Hearts), Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur), O'Brien (Newcastle Utd), O'Shea (Manchester Utd); Rowlands (QPR), Douglas (Blackburn Rovers), Kinsella (unattached), Reid (Nottingham Forest); Lee (Cardiff City), Morrison (Birmingham City).
